Canterbury

He wasn’t married. And nothing happened. Not physically at least. But I think that my heart was broken.

When I was questioned in the lift as to the status of my relationship with Kenny; I was actually on my way to my room to talk to another man. Another manager. One who had totally captured my heart. I thought he was spectacular, older than me, good looking and oh, we could talk for hours. And we did, we’d get to work early and speak on the phone, a cup of tea in hand, the jobs of the day sometimes talked about, sometimes it was our lives.

He told me once that he wished he’d have met me first. Not his girlfriend. He had a girlfriend, a very long term settled girlfriend. They lived together in a Kent town. I don’t remember her name. He told me he loved her but wasn’t necessarily in love with her. The distinction doesn’t matter. There was never any possibility of him leaving her.

We had a team meal in London once and we walked through the park in the dark, a group of us but everyone knew that it was us two. We were obviously a pair. I think we might have held hands for a bit, a tipsy slip up from the professional status quo.

My area manager confronted me about him in my office. I played dumb and told her that we were friends. I have no doubt that she didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me. I think, now looking back, she was looking out for me, not him. I did not think that at the time.

I was looking at a flat with my mum. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. My phone rang as we left and I stood on the sunny street as a mutual friend told me that he’d married her on a beach in Mauritius whilst on holiday. A holiday he’d told me he was dreading. Just a few days before.

It was all a lie or none of it was. He maybe was dreading it. He maybe wasn’t. It may well have been the happiest day of his life. It certainly should have been. My wedding day will be mine. He maybe was in love with me too. There’s a part of me that thinks he might have been.

He was an education. A learning curve. I hope he’s happy wherever he is now

The Midnight Oil

It is 1.45am. In about fifteen minutes or so, I’ll wake Poppy for a feed, a nappy change and she’ll then go to bed in her cot. Jody will take over to do the next feed at least and probably the one after that too. I’ll sleep from 2.30am ish and I haven’t been to bed yet. A caveat this evening, I fell asleep on Grace’s bed for two hours so I’m not as tired as I usually am by this point but the gist of this post remains the same.

J asked me tonight, as he asked me last night, why I don’t come to bed after the 11pm feed, why I can’t get a couple of hours before the 2am feed and I understand why he’s asking, he worries that I’m not sleeping enough, he is trying to get as much sleep as he can before he wakes up to feed his daughter and that would be the most sensible thing. But I don’t seem to be able to.

The reasons are various. Firstly, I don’t like waking up once I’m asleep. Not in the morning, obviously, though that does depend on the time of the wake up, but in the middle of the night. I hate when the girls wake up and I have to sit on the end of their bed in the cold while they fall asleep, a process that sometimes takes five minutes and sometimes takes an hour. I know that I should savour that feeling of being needed and that when they are sixteen, or ten, or whatever age, but I am not big enough for that. I’m ratty and irritable and want to go back to sleep. So, in this case, in these days, I would rather stay awake. I’m less ratty and irritable, tired but it seems the better way. These days are short after all.

Secondly, I need the time by myself. Pre Poppy, I was busy but did have time by myself, the hours the girls are at nursery, even if I was doing stuff, cleaning the bath, writing, washing up etc, the minutiae of a normal day. I could listen to music, or put YouTube on and I could potter about. Now, I have an adorable small sidekick, a limpet baby who misses me when we’re apart and I’m never without her, or want to be, and if it isn’t her, then it’s her boisterous big sisters who want my attention or a kiss or for me to unpeel two bits of Lego. This sounds like a moan, and it absolutely is not, I think I’m more in love with my life right now than I have ever been, but I, and everyone else, needs that time alone. To think and to breathe and to write.

That’s mostly it. Things will change when Jody goes back to work on Thursday, and he obviously can’t get the big girls up by himself and feed Poppy and get ready for work while I catch up on sleep so I will have to start sleeping in more or less a normal pattern, but for the next few nights at least, I’ll carry on as I am. I feel as if I want to write again, as if the blockage has been unblocked, as if I have something to say again. This is novel, no pun intended, and I want to continue and if that means that the writing happens while the rest of the world sleeps, then so be it.

Right, Pops is now nine minutes overdue her feed and fast asleep. I might talk about breastfeeding tomorrow so stay tuned for that.

Imagine

“imagine falling in love with somebody only to find out that your capacity to love grows with every new thing you notice about them”

I read this on twitter this week and it has stayed with me ever since, it’s popped into my head as I’ve fallen asleep, occurred to me again as I’ve walked to nursery or been by myself for whatever reason and I wanted to share really.

Jody and I had an up and down first six months, we probably met three months too early really, both of emerging out of things that had left us emotionally scarred. But I loved him so early and we exchanged ‘I love you’s’ within a couple of weeks. There were dark moments, he would quite openly say that he wasn’t sure if he could stay in the country (he’d previously lived all over the world), he would be brutally honest about his feelings and there was a brief break-up that was something and nothing and which I dealt with surprisingly calmly for me, even now I think back on it and wonder where that strength came from. There is a part of me that thinks that it was because I must have known that we were meant to be together but it wasn’t that at the time, I don’t know what it was really.

We got over all of that and we moved in together seven months after getting together and it’s been largely plain sailing since then. There have been some moments where he has said things that have made me doubt him and his love for me, moments that have induced real panic but mostly, we are good. And the above quote is absolutely true. We had been together just over two years when we had twins. TWINS. Most people are still on the holidays and ikea trips by that point and we were doubling our family. Crazy but we did it. Next month, we will have been together for six years and that is amazing to me.

I love him more than I did then because he is my girls dad. And he is wonderful. Yes, he is impatient sometimes and he likes to ‘listen to the radio’ on a Sunday. AKA have a little nap. But he adores them and they him. I cannot wait to see him with our new little girl in April. Truly cannot wait.

Love is really hard. Relationships are really hard. But whatever happens, this relationship will be one that I will never, ever regret.

 

Borrowed Time

When I was twenty five, my brother died.

This isn’t said starkly to garner sympathy or to make a huge impact, it just is what it is. It’s something that I don’t think about that often to be honest, sometimes I am truly taken aback that it happened at all, it’ll hit me like a ton of bricks in the middle of the night or if I hear a particular song, grief is weird like that. You patch the hole in your heart but sometimes the stitches twitch and the hole is not quite exposed again, but jiggled, like the rain would make a long mended broken bone ache

When I was thirty one, my boyfriend dumped me.

I’ve mentioned this before and now, a number of years later, it is one of those things that I view as very minor in my life, a necessary thing and the thing that led me to J and to my life now but at the time. It was like losing a family member all over again. We had been friends since we were nineteen, best friends that turned into something more, and I know, as sure as the sun will set each night, that friends is absolutely what we should have stayed. But we didn’t and the break up was traumatic and drawn out, hurtful when it didn’t need to be, things said in anger and what felt like heart break but wasn’t.

There are a million and one things in between those things and now that take a swab at your heart. Your children being unwell, a missed opportunity, a job offer that never comes, your jeans not fitting, things that are tiny and huge but always a little heart breaking in their own way.

My thirties have been infinitely better than my twenties. Would I go back to my twenties if offered? Not in a million years. If I could take J and my girls with me, have longer with them, have all the time in the world, then yes, but it doesn’t work like that.

Time is always borrowed, have this time but then your children will start school. Enjoy this time, it’s the last time you’ll have a January Tuesday in the rain with nothing to do but watch Paw Patrol and make a space rocket out of tissue paper. Enjoy the feeling of a baby squirming inside you because this might be your last baby.

Don’t take time for granted.